WWE: What to Expect from Tonight’s Smackdown Live: January 16, 2018
Jan 16, 2018 at 1:45 PM
WWE Smackdown will be looking forward to delivering a packed episode, this week with just two weeks remaining for Royal Rumble. With so much going on around the flagship show, the blue brand has converted into the B-show of the company. It failed to bring compact shows for quite sometimes.
Perhaps, keeping this in mind, several matches were confirmed to take place on the show much earlier. Two of them will take place to determine the two finalists for the United States championship tournament who will lock horns at the Royal Rumble. Also, a huge six-woman tag team match got announced, as well. Tonight’s Smackdown will be hosted at the Laredo Energy Center in Laredo, Texas.
The main storyline that is pushing the Tuesday Night show forward is the ongoing saga between Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan. AJ Styles has been the victim of the latter one’s strange decisions, lately, whereas, Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn benefitted from it from his favouritism.
Meanwhile, last week’s show concluded with a huge tag team action which was restarted multiple times by the commissioner handing over a beatdown to them. These two will definitely start the show throwing complaints around this set-up yet another heated confrontation among all of them. It will heat things up for the WWE Championship at Royal Rumble.
Tonight will also mark the two semi-final matches of the United States tournament. In the first matchup, Xavier Woods will go up against Jinder Mahal. Quite interestingly, the second matchup was also announced for the night. This one will take place between Bobby Roode and Mojo Rawley since the latter one was victorious, last week.
Now, witnessing this lineup, it is evident that one babyface will be pitted against one heel in the finale. So, Jinder Mahal is the favourite one to win the first match of United States Championship semi-finale, whereas, Bobby Roode should emerge by winning the second one. It would set up a big singles match at the Royal Rumble.
Another huge match was confirmed for tonight’s Smackdown from the women’s division. After Becky Lynch defeated Ruby Riott in a singles contest, a challenge was issued on the fallout show. So, the three members of the Riott Squad will go against the three prime babyfaces, Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch and Naomi.
Shelton Benjamin and Chad Gable received a shot to the titles, last week. So, they will continue to grow their heel antics. Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see how the officials will keep the momentum by the side of Rusev and Aiden English.